


The Scarf, For The Record

by Jenwryn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Community: sherlockbbc_fic, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-09
Updated: 2010-09-09
Packaged: 2017-10-11 15:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/113676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's like a trifecta. Or a trinity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scarf, For The Record

**Author's Note:**

> This is all [sherlockbbc_fic](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/)'s fault. Well, that, and my slightly flawed remembering of [this prompt, about Sherlock needing to hold onto something when he sleeps](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/2262.html?thread=3727318#t3727318), which was scooting around my brain, during my morning tea break, today; I'd _thought_ I was writing what that person asked for, but kind of went off on a wordy tangent. Typically enough, really... and probably only to be expected when you can't exactly just pop online to check the details because, you know, at work and all.

Before moving into 221B Baker Street, John had grown to distrust sleeping; had grown to distrust his body's apparent need/drive/determination to dream. He'd supposed, too, when he'd first met Sherlock, that it had just been his luck to move in with someone even more dysfunctional on the matter than he.

Chalk that one up on the exhaustive list of things that Doctor John Watson hadn't been quite right about.

Of course, his misconceptions about Sherlock's sleeping habits had only been back... then. At some point. At the point where it must have begun, except that John is almost entirely sure that he can't remember when that point was.

He scoots his left hand down amongst the sheets, carefully, and finds a phone – not his, despite being on what is, technically, supposed to be his side of the bed – and presses his thumb against a round button: 3:58 AM. Too early to be awake, too late to be awake, and his mind just foggy enough to roll around in thoughts like a puppy in newspaper.

He wonders whether, if something doesn't have a beginning, that means it might not end, either.

And, yes, yes, even sleep-deprived he know that's a really, really stupid thought; sure he does. He knows that it's childish, too, as well as overly romantic – and John's never even been that way inclined, honestly he hasn't – and, most importantly, he also knows that it's incorrect: everything starts somewhere. Sherlock, probably, could give him something much more accurate than a guesstimate in that respect, too. A date. An hour. A time down to the minute. Could say, _see John, this was the moment when it all happened, this was the moment when you realised this, and felt that, and figured this thing out._

Sherlock could probably say that, naturally, but John could certainly debate the matter with him for ten times as long, too (_so how, exactly, do you figure that, Sherlock? I mean, what are you_ judging_ it by? The first time I stopped correcting people? That first kiss, up against the fridge?_ – John's face would warm at the memory of that, even with months in between, because the feel of Sherlock against him, against him like that, had taken him by surprise and tipped his world on end_ – Or are you thinking more along the lines of simply 'when you met me' because, you know, really, that's a total cop-out._)

Come to think of it, Sherlock would probably latch on to the topic as a perfect arguing point, if he were bored enough. Sherlock, however, isn't bored. Sherlock isn't the one lying here with his eyes sleepy but open, either; memorising, for the umpteenth time, the soft, snuffling sounds that the world's only consulting detective does, in fact, make when he's asleep. And it simply doesn't _feel_ like there was a beginning, not to John, not really, not when he's lying here, like this; lying here, with Sherlock sprawled mostly away from him, across the bed, but with one of his hands – long-fingered and close to bony – wrapped around John's upper arm. Sherlock's hold isn't tight, exactly, but it is pressing, insistent; almost clingy. It restricts John's options, when it comes to moving; traps him there, as if John were Sherlock's anchor. No, as if John were Sherlock's security blanket. Or his teddy bear. His _habitual_ teddy bear, so much so that John had actually asked Sherlock once, back when they'd been newer to the whole sharing-of-a-bed-when-Sherlock-decides-to-sleep thing, what on earth the man had done, before John's arrival. Before John's arrival, and John's affection, and John's admission of Sherlock into his room and his heart and his space and his bed. Sherlock hadn't really answered him, not truly; had simply studied the duvet in a shifty kind of way – clearly trying for defiant; failing, and looking, instead, for all the world like a man steeling himself for a bout of merciless teasing – and had mumbled something about psychological connections, warmth of his hands, and a tatty old child-sized scarf. John had smiled slowly, but had also known better than to push the matter. The doctor, after all, may have taken a good long while to work out what it was that the pair of them had become, what it was the pair of them had going together, but he isn't stupid enough, now, to risk it on the (admittedly worryingly frequent) urge to say something insipid about _Sherlock_ and _adorable._

(The scarf, for the record, did finally take up residence with John, too. It was midwinter, and John had been running late, after complications at work, in the wake of a case that he hadn't helped with; Sherlock had clearly just passed out, right there, right then, in the middle of John's bed, unable or unwilling to wait for the man to keep him company. He'd looked a little bit lost, though, with his face scrunched against a pillow, and the worn tartan scarf peeking from beneath it. After that, the scarf had commandeered a hook on the back of John's bedroom door. John pretends not to see it.)

(It's Mycroft, in the end, who discusses it with him. It's over a cup of tea and an interrogation regarding his little brother's well-being – undertaken, naturally yet inexplicably, in the middle of deserted building site, though the table is set with cheerful blue linen and, honest to God, Mycroft has a shot of the Mad Hatter in him. It's not John who mentions the scarf, obviously, but he doesn't need to, because Mycroft always knows more than John finds either healthy or decent – it was a small enough mercy that he'd stopped badgering John about safe sex, when John had finally grown fed-up enough to send him a certified clean bill of sexual health, signed by the local community doctor, and the words PISS OFF, MYCROFT scrawled cheerfully enough across the top of it. "Oh," Mycroft had said, apropos of nothing at all, from the other side of a cupcake with lilac-covered frosting. "That old thing? Used to be mine, you know. The scarf, I mean. I put Sherlock to bed with it one night, when he was such a tiny thing, and awfully upset. He never was fond of thunderstorms, you see, and Mummy had been away for more than a month." The fact that Sherlock has been prone to sleeping with a relict not only of his babyhood, but of the days when his big brother's protectiveness had been a good deal more welcome, doesn't surprise John anywhere near as much as he suspects it might surprise someone else. After all, it isn't as though it had taken him long to work out that 'arch-nemesis', in that tone of voice, is pretty much the Sherlock Holmes' version of _love you, bro_. Not that John would be stupid enough to mention that particular deduction to Sherlock, either. Not unless he actually wanted to be punished with deliberately hideous violin abuse for at least a week.)

John closes his eyes, once, twice, and then turns his face to look the better at Sherlock. At his... John doesn't know, exactly, what words best fit there. 'Boyfriend' sounds like something Moriarty would have said; 'lover', even more so. Sherlock is both of those things, but more than that, and something else entirely, too. He's simply... Sherlock. He simply _is_. He's Sherlock, and he is, and he's a little bit John's, as well, and John doesn't even know – certainly not at this time of the morning, at this time of the night, with Sherlock hiccuping gently in his sleep – which part makes his stomach warm more. It's like a trifecta. Or a trinity.

Sherlock's hand shifts, changing angle, changing pressure.

John rests lets his head rest heavier against his pillow, and listens to Sherlock, and to London, too, outside the window. The city never quite goes silent, not completely, not like nights in the desert, nights where the sand had been cold beneath his feet as he'd looked up at the stars and wondered what the morning would bring. No, she never falls completely asleep, not London, but she is hushed; subdued. Like Sherlock, with his genius turned down low, turned onto simmer.

Sherlock's lashes are stark against his face. Sherlock's skin is pale against the tan-coloured sheets that John had brought with him when he'd moved here; the tan-coloured sheets that Sherlock does so enjoy grumbling about, probably just because he can. John reaches his free hand out, sluggish and warm, and pushes dark hair from Sherlock's face. Sherlock's hair is a mess of curls, a riot of them; John has more than thoroughly memorised their scent and texture. He likes how they catch on his thumbs, as wayward and as beguilingly petulant as the rest of Sherlock, when the detective lets him touch – which is often, because Sherlock has never been averse to touching – chalk that one up on the list of things that Doctor John Watson has observed correctly, thank you kindly – more that he's never been entirely convinced that people want to touch him. John does, though, very much, and he likes how Sherlock's mouth quirks, pleased and satisfied and almost-surprised, even now, at the _rightness_ of John's hands. And mouth. And the rest of him.

John knows the lines and angles of Sherlock's body. He knows them well. He finds them familiar, but never dull. He likes to re-trace the places that he knows make Sherlock breathe a little shallower; the places that he knows make Sherlock wriggle (undignified, almost-laughing, a sight for John and John alone). Sherlock's body is lined with the spider-kisses of scars, mostly fine and pale and healed, but often something newer: the offspring of explosions, and acids, and nasty habits, and experiments gone wrong, and experiments gone right. Nothing like the scars on John's body, which are taut and ugly even now, and which speak pinchingly of war and murder, rather than murder and delight.

John likes the way that Sherlock looks, when he's resting, just as much as when he's awake and terrifyingly brilliant.

Sherlock mumbles something that sounds an awful lot like _footprints and scrambled eggs_, and shifts his hand yet again, as though he wants to tug John in closer to him, but can't remember how.

Beginning, or no beginning; John knows, without a doubt, even with the room dark around him and his mind sinking closer to sleep, that this is, quite frankly, the strangest circumstance he's ever found himself in. This thing they have, this life, this world, this relationship, it doesn't push and pull in the ways that John's accustomed to. It tugs in other directions instead, rich and warm and dangerous and settled – and involves quantities of running across London than he'd only thought possible in the lives of BBC sci-fi characters – and it's really rather marvellous. The feel of Sherlock's hand against John's arm, holding him, needing him, aware of him at some subconscious level, even in his sleep, has become one of the fundamentals, one of the foundations, of John's whole damned life. That touch is one of the reasons why John does what he does; one of the reasons why John deals with the desiccated thumb in the coffee jar, and the C-4 in the living-room, and the endearing hilarity that is Sherlock learning how to cook via _MasterChef_.

John rolls over, pulling his arm free of Sherlock's grasp, gently, so that he can move in closer, and wrap his own arms, easily, and just a little awkwardly, around Sherlock's body. Sherlock grumbles, then breathes out, mumbles _John_, and sinks deeper into sleep, calmer, the snuffle dying down to a bare minimum, and his lungs moving, steadier, against John's body.

John sleeps too, and he doesn't need to dream.


End file.
